m2m keeps your city clean

Let’s face it, we all love a clean city. Clean streets, no overflowing rubbish coming out of bins, parks full of pets running in the grass but everything nice and tidy. So, don’t you think pulling the strings in the background of all this must be kind of complicated?

There are some proven M2M solutions that are working for cities all around the world to perform intelligent waste management. Let’s see three already in use:

Enevo offers an end to end turnkey solution for cities to implement M2M powered microsensors in trash containers that communicate their status to a central data collection center.

The sensors are periodically scanning to see whether the bin is below an “almost full” threshold. When this threshold is surpassed the container sends an alert to the data collection center and the bin is set for collection.

The solution then calculates routes for the collection vehicles in order to collect only those that have sent the collection alert. The collection vehicle fleet is also managed to receive updated information in the event of any changes of status during the shift.

Therefore we have a complete end to end solution that positively impacts on the quality of life of citizens keeping streets clean while cutting on unnecessary mileage, reducing the carbon footprint as well as saving on unneeded personnel.

Enevo calculates that as much as 40% can be saved by setting up their solution that works with any type of container and therefore can manage other discarded material like glass, paper or unwanted clothes

Other vendors are including an improvement to Enevo’s system. The containers have a solar power compacter, so besides sending the threshold alert, certain levels of rubbish may trigger the container to compact its contents and make space for more before the collection vehicle arrives.

Clean dog, happy owner

Pet owners in many places of the world are bounded by law to follow strict regulations over not littering streets or other public places with their pets’ excrements. Besides taking the path of increasing the amount untidy owners are fined, some bold cities are looking towards technology for solutions and ways of rewarding responsible users.

Spanish city Guadalajara – 50 km away from the capital Madrid – has thought that rewarding is more effective than punishing. The 10 bins designed to collect dog excrement with the same connected principle than the ones from the previous solution. But these have a couple of different features. They provide black small size waste bags to conveniently clean up after the dog has finished and the container opens when citizen cards are swiped over a reader.

The RFID powered cards account how often these containers are used and rewards the most “poop friendly” owners with veterinarian vouchers. So being a clean pet owner really pays off in Guadalajara.

Waste management, M2M and RFID: better together

A similar combination of RFID and M2M working hand in hand can also be found in the Netherlands. To drop off the rubbish in one of the smart containers an RFID city card is needed. If the container does not have a reader it must not be used and reported immediately.

This addresses many city concerns such as recyclable material being stolen from containers, unofficial bins popping up across the city and calculate each citizen’s waste tax according to the amount of trash produced and recycled – recycled material is free of taxes but must be used correctly.